RC Strategy

[jrshaktimaan]

Reading Comprehension Strategies:
1. Read the entire passage very carefully first.
I prefer this strategy (it helped me to get from inconsistent 50% correct RC to about 80-90% and eventually in 96th percentile in verbal). It is outlined in various amount of details in Kaplan, PowerScore, and MGMAT books.
The idea is fairly straightforward - while critically reading the passage, you build a mental map, stopping to paraphrase after each paragraph and at the end to quickly summarize the passage. The strategy also involves critically reading - meaning constantly asking why a certain sentence/phrase is there, how they add to the development, and change the tone. It is important to master each of these elements before actually trying to put the entire strategy together. At first it does feel awkward - almost like wearing an armor suite that is clunky and seems useless - useless until GMAT shoots an arrow at you that is. Some of my challenges were questions such as - why do I need to stop (waste valuable time) and paraphrase the passage? (that answer comes in gradually). Also, how to actually stay interested and keep my thoughts from wandering around as I read? And finally - how to read critically? It took a while to learn to pick every word and notice subtle differences in tone (words such as however, but, still, and examples help reveal author's true intention). I trusted the strategy and strangely enough it worked. I could see improvement within just a week. My performance became a lot more consistent and the strategy was becoming a lot more natural. I was also starting to catch little traps planted in the text and noticing tone a lot more than before.

It is also good if you can start reading regularly to train your ear. (See this post for my recommendations on reading material I call GMAT Fiction). If you are not a native speaker, you should keep a notebook and a dictionary handy to keep track of all the new words you encounter. Some of them you will meet over and over in the book, so it will be much faster to look up. For international students, my recommendation is 1-2K pages within a month to get your mind tuned and prepped to absorb large quantity of English passages. Also, many recommend WSJ, Economist, NY Times, and other magazines, but I found those too short and very boring. Though the passages were hard, i could force myself to read only a few articles before my mind would start wondering somewhere else. with books this did not happen, so I preferred that option.


2. Skim the passage briefly.
This is another RC strategy. As Princeton Review puts it - "spend no more than a minute or two reading the entire passage." (Cracking the GMAT Cat)
The goal is to create a mental roadmap of the passage and get a very general idea about the tone and layout and then go back to the passage to answer each of the questions. This strategy works for a number of people but did not work for me. I could only use it if I were really short on time and had to pick my battles. In my experience GMAT passages are always tricky and it is not easy to figure out if the author is arguing for or against a certain point by simply skimming the text.


Tips
1. Always read the First and Last sentence more carefully no matter what. GMAT passages are very structured and the first stence will always contain the main idea and set the tone.
2. Watch for trigger words such as "but, however, still, regardless, nevertheless, although" and others
3. Always ask yourself why the author put this example here
4. Pretend that you are very interested in the reading material or another option is to play a game with the author and try to prove the author wrong - pick at every word
5. Always know what the main idea of the passage is, even if the questions are not asking for it
6. It helps to know the vocabulary but you can make it - as long as you know all of the tone and general words, you will be able to tell author's direction. Specifics may not matter, though again, I have found that good vocabulary helps on RC
7. Do whatever it takes to help you read/remember the passage better - write summary notes (even if you never go back to them), paraphrase each paragraph or even sentence, etc.

Common Pitfalls:
More often than not, the most typical second best answer choice on the RC will be out of scope. I found it quite amusing and made a game out of it (I know, I am a bit over the top with RC but it was the hardest section for me to master). After a while, I can very quickly (i.e. immediately) pick out an answer choice that goes outside of the scope of the passage as a general question (purpose/title/etc) or even a more specific one.
Another catch/trap you will see quite a bit is reliance on "trigger" words. For example, the passage will spend 2-3 sentences on one point and then at the end will flip it with a "but", "however", or another "trigger" word. This is designed to catch those who skim/skip or don't read attentively and is really a big reason to read the passage attentively (in my view) vs. just rushing through it. For example, a passage may talk about how the number of accidents has been growing and that many people have been injured in the last year in car accidents and at the end, say "but death rates have declined" and an example of a trap would be an answer choice that would say "Injuries and fatalities are rising as the result of car accidents."
Finally a more subtle way to get many of us to pick the wrong answer choice is making the text very heavy fact-based with long complex words and terminology, which distracts from the simple task of analyzing the passage and asking why each sentence is put where it is put. Sometimes, you can get to the answer by just looking at why a certain sentence is in a certain spot. However, most focus on facts, understanding/remembering which minerals or microbes live in which environment, etc. The facts and dry details are there not to test your memory/knowledge of the subject but rather to distract and not let you see the passage structure clearly.